Natalie Wood's sister has said she does not believe the film star's husband
Robert Wagner would have "purposefully" harmed her during the
events that led up to her mysterious death by drowning in the Pacific 30
years ago.

As police launched a new investigation into the events of Nov 28, 1981, when the actress vanished overboard from the yacht on which she was sailing with Mr Wagner and a fellow actor, Christopher Walken, Lana Wood said she hoped the truth would now finally emerge.

But she added: "I cannot ever believe that [Wagner] would purposefully do something to hurt her.

"I believe it was drink and people being out of control and not thinking clearly and just high emotions. In this case, it would be an accident, but the truth was never told."

After her sister died in the cold dark waters off the California coast, Miss Wood says she always doubted the official version that she drowned after falling from the yacht unnoticed when she tried to clamber into a dinghy.

The Los Angeles sheriff's department has now assigned two murder detectives to investigate afresh how Natalie Wood died after a day of heavy drinking and angry rows involving Mr Wagner and Mr Walken.

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The case has been re-opened after Dennis Davern, the captain of the yacht Splendour, said that he had taken part in a cover-up at Mr Wagner's request. Police pointed out that the 81-year-old former star of the long-running Hart to Hart television series is not a suspect.

Lana Wood, 65, also an actress best known for her role in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, said that she does not believe her sister died as a result of foul play, but nor does she believe that Mr Wagner has revealed all that he knows about events that night.

She said in an interview that a coroner's conclusion that Natalie slipped as she tried to secure or scramble into a dinghy late at night "made no sense" as her sister was so terrified of the water.

"Natalie hated the water," she said. "She had a great fear of it. She didn't go into her own swimming pool at home."

Her fear of open sea was particularly acute because their mother once predicted that Natalie would die by drowning in "dark water", she recalled.

The body of the star of West Side Story, who was nominated for an Oscar three times - including for her performance as a teenager opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause - was found floating in her night-gown and down jacket off Catalina island after a Thanksgiving holiday boating trip. She was 43.

The coroner's verdict that she died in a tragic accident did little to quell speculation about one of Hollywood's enduring mysteries, a case of celebrity life mimicking a big screen plot.

Lana Wood has campaigned for years for a new inquiry into her sister's fate. Asked if she believed that Wagner should be punished if he knowingly left Natalie in the water, she told the entertainment website tmz.com. "If that's the case, he's probably been punished all these years as that would be a hell of a thing to live with.

"I just want to know once and for all. Natalie was a wonderful person and she deserves the truth and she deserves to rest."

The sheriff's department has re-opened the case after dogged lobbying by Marti Rulli, a childhood friend of Mr Davern who wrote a 2009 book with him about the case, Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour.

She submitted a dossier of evidence, including sworn statements from Mr Davern, a Coastguard official and a woman on a neighbouring boat casting serious doubt about the official version of that evening's events.

Mr Davern told The Sunday Telegraph that Miss Woods disappeared after a furious row with Mr Wagner that was fuelled by heavy drinking and motivated by tension over her relationship with Mr Walken, her co-star in a new film who was their guest on the yacht.

He said that Mr Wagner persuaded him not switch on the searchlight to look for her or to call the Coastguard for several hours. Instead, the actor plied him with more drink.

"I think he was thinking about his image and this mixed with the confusion at the time," he said. "I tried to convince myself that she really had taken the dinghy to get away."

When the authorities were finally alerted, Mr Davern did not tell them about the rows and tension on the boat that evening.

"I have been trying to get the true version out for a long time now. But nobody seemed to want to listen until now. I just want justice for Natalie and for these unanswered questions to be answered. It is for the investigators to try and find those answers."

Mrs Rulli also provided the police with testimony from a passenger on a nearby boat who heard a woman screaming for help from the water at the time Miss Woods disappeared and from the Coastguard official who found her body and believed she had been alive in the water for several hours.

"This is not new evidence that has mysteriously come to light at the time of the 30th anniversary, as some people seem to be suggesting," she told The Sunday Telegraph. "It is old information that has never previously been investigated.

"It's been a long and slow process but I am thrilled that a new generation of detectives are now willing to take a look at the evidence. I am confident that they can finally get to the bottom of what happened."

Mr Wagner gave his version of events in his memoir and interviews in 2008. He said that he had argument with Mr Walken, smashing a bottle in the process, but the subject was how much of one personal life an actor should not sacrifice for his career – and not, as Mr Davern said, his suspicion that his wife was having an affair with her co-star on a new film.

Mr Wagner said they all eventually calmed down but when he went to bed later, he discovered that Miss Wood was missing. A spokesman for the actor said last week: "Although no one in the Wagner family has heard from the LA County Sheriff's Department about this matter, they fully support the efforts of the LA County Sheriff's Department and trust they will evaluate whether any new information relating to the death of Natalie Wood Wagner is valid, and that it comes from a credible source or sources other than those simply trying to profit from the 30-year anniversary of her tragic death."

Miss Wood and Mr Wagner met when the former child star was an 18-year-old beauty and he was a dashing young actor, eight years her elder and already with a reputation as a "ladies' man".

Following a year-long courtship, they married three days after Christmas in 1957 at the start of a relationship that, even by Hollywood's standards, was a tempestuous saga, an on-off love affair that encompassed two weddings over a quarter of a century.

The first marriage ended in divorce in 1962, a year after the release of the film for which she is best remembered, as the romantic heroine Maria in the musical West Side Story. Three of her co-stars last week re-united to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the film in a hand and footprint ceremony in Hollywood.

Miss Wood and Mr Wagner both married and divorced again before their second wedding in 1972. Nine years later, in a twist that might have come straight from a scriptwriter's pen, Miss Wood drowned alone in the waters that so terrified her, a tragic final denouement to a glittering career.